Insecurities

We all have them, but often are so reluctant to discuss them. They are like sensitive scabs that never seem to fully heal. They're just temporarily shut wounds. Long term solutions for these issues are hard to obtain. I refer not to those little insecurities but to those deep seated ones. Those pushed to the back of the mind such that they rarely consciously come up to disturb daily equinimity.

I've rarely met anyone who can hold these insecurities in their consciousness for long periods of time without being a little "off". If they can, they tend to be akin to Jolie's character in Girl Interrupted--already dead and able to walk with their wounds fully unhealed--haha--like mummies. Walking dead folk who have no problems interrupting the lives of the living. You can't hurt them because they feel nothing.

This whole fucken week has been about insecurities. Asian man acted like an asshole all over a fucken acne breakout--how freakin high school. How freakin wierd--who the hell is over 25 and still has acne issues other than cameron diaz?

I've been pretty sheltered in terms of looks--very few are overweight and few let details like skin be a problem. People around me are usually just bummed out about not being hot. Still, I offered Asian man a facial, was very authentically understanding about the ordeal, and let him know that indeed--everyone has been there, if not many, at least once before. I put it nicely, and I worked hard to allay his fears.

He's a cute guy--not because his skin is incredible but because he just has the bone structure for it. Didn't work. He avoided me this weekened pulling some awful excuse proving that he can't lie well. I still saw him briefly--I didn't think his acne was THAT bad.

A friend of mine had wild sex with her super-rich boyfriend this past weekend. He finally got her to do some more substance with her. With a few more pharmaceuticals added to their cocktails, they were able to fuck well until dawn. He went down on her seven times. All is good for her for a while.

She curiously mentioned that in the 2+ years they've been together and fucking--he's never taken his shirt off in front of her with the turned-on lights. Finally, she said to him--I've noticed that... blah blah blah... you don't have to worry about this around me--it's not a big deal for me. He's not in shape, but it takes no feat of the imagination to know what he must look like. So he's out of shape, big whoop. He's not dating a guy--so it can't matter that much.

He finally did, and she finally got through to him that she really didn't care. Much props to her for succeeding. He admitted that his fear was based on his acne scars on his back. Holy shit--how retarded. Beyond just saying--exfoliate or try this awesome spa treatment--it couldn't have been really bad. Perhaps I speak out of ignorance, but the real meat of the lesson came when she realized that early on in their relationship she had offered him a back rub which he declined for unknown yet compelling reasons. She realized--this must have been the reason--and not what she thought at the time. Had she been self-centered about interpreting the situation, she might have been offended at the time.

The hot bartender whom I ended up dating for a little while had this very odd insecurity about his legs. The dude was flawlessly shaped. Incredible ass, hips, abs--the whole v-shape cuts--the incredibly tight lower ab section with the awesome belly-button in addition to the perfect shoulders, neck, to chest & rib-cage ratio. The lenght of his arms were even perfect. He had what I've since learned is called a "low-slung" ass. His ass was perfect. But because his torso was long, his legs were not as usually long as they might be on non-mesopmorphs--at least in proportion. He took this to mean that his legs were underdeveloped. They were not. They were not huge but they were muscled, and toned enough to tell apart the muscle groups.

So he kept taking up random sports to develop his legs. I didn't see the point. For some reason he really liked my ass and legs.

One day, he told me how playing tennis for like 10 minutes had left him sore. I laughed derisively--I had not intended it to be so bad. It's just that the situation didn't make sense to me, and his facial expression was hilarious to me. How could he be so seriously distraught over his legs and over soreness from 10 mins on the court? He really did look distraught, and that made me laugh. At the time, I did not understand that his feeling(s) were not about the 10mins, or about his legs really, but likely something else.

I looked up at him, and I saw actual real pain on his face in reaction to my sharp snicker. I was freaked. I didn't expect to see such a serious emotion on his rostrum. He looked down, and I could tell this had been a major and real insecurity for him. The pained look only faded as he worked to bury it beyond the realm of physical expression.

I rubbed his shoulder (making me hard) and tried to tell him that it wasn't that big a deal. But no attempt would likely equal the sharp tinge of derision that must have come through in my laugh. I don't know what it was about my laugh, but it got to him, and I knew I couldn't do enough damage control in the moment.

I told a friend about a recent conversation with Asian Boy, and she noted reflexively that often he doesn't know what to say. He sucks at making conversation. I also went over many of the odd comments that seemed to make shit awkward which I kept interpretting to mean that he didn't like me. But after mulling them over in the background while cleaning my room, I noticed patterns, and I began to uncover the inseucrities that are consistent in his behavior. Without conscious effort, the pattern of his awkwardness regarding a specific theme came to me like an epiphany. It all made sense. The motivation, the situation, the effort, the expression--it just clicked and seemed like child's play. I just couldn't see it at the time because I was obsessed with him liking me.

Now, my "re"-intrepretation could easily be understood to be an eloquent way of making excuses for him not liking me, but several key moments when his experssions were sharp and defensive that I did not forget, lead me to believe that the insecurities I have picked out are not imagined and are quite intense.

Today, I decided to drop my attitude of trying to be aloof around him. He freaked out at first, got cocky at first, but then seemed grateful. His first comment to me was, "how long have you been here?"

To me the comment seems retarded, but my friend actually had predicted that he would make such a comment precisely because he's clueless about making casual conversation into meaningful conversation. The list of comments and the analysis would be retarded for this blog.

I leared the same lesson about insecurities tonight when I tried having a conversation about a topic that only the very wealthy would know. This friend comes from a not-so well-off background. I didn't think about it at the time. I was just fascinated by the discovery I had made via another experience. She abruptly got off the phone. It didn't hit me until several hours later.

I'm not sensitive enough to people's insecurities. I have to learn. I can forgive AB when I realize these things. Still, no assurances, no hopes for anything are enough to drive me through any of this. The motivation must be separate.

PS:
I had a two-part childhood. One in which I was isolated and told I was the shit, and one in which I was hated on consistently. I recall as a young kid noting what my parents lied to themselves about and how that affected their behavior towards me and the comments they made to me. I of course noted the lies they told me, especially those about myself. The duplicitous and dichotomous nature of this experience forced me to look in a very hard way at some of my deepest insecurities.

Some insecurities could be resolved and others could not. I either grew scars as thick as cables or employed some pretty intense compensatory measures to survive. In a sesnse, I became disconnected with the reality of these particular insecurities. I could look at them as if looking through transparent titanium--very clearly but with no emotion and protected from the temperature of the emotions they emmitted.

In this sense, I have been like my parents.